NEW ORLEANS — An animal rights group said it wants a federal
investigation of "gruesome" chimpanzee and monkey deaths and injuries
since late 2012 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Tulane
University. Louisiana-Lafayette should be fined $60,000 and Tulane
$10,000, added the group called Stop Animal Exploitation Now.

SAEN's executive director, Michael Budkie, on Thursday released
complaints sent Jan. 24 to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal
and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Budkie also released pages from the universities' reports about the
incidents: the death of a rhesus monkey in 2012 at Tulane and, at
Louisiana-Lafayette, injuries to three African green monkeys and the
deaths of two chimpanzees in 2012 and a baby rhesus monkey in 2013.

SAEN obtained the university documents through freedom of information
requests to USDA, said Budkie. He is asking the maximum $10,000 fine for
each alleged violation of lab animal welfare rules.

Tulane's rhesus monkey, used for breeding rather than experiments at the
Tulane National Primate Research Center in Covington, died in September
2012 because it was left in the van that took it to see a veterinarian,
according to a letter from Laura S. Levy, vice president for research.

She wrote that some workers were disciplined and all were retrained. She
added that transport cages are now loaded only from the back of the
vehicle and placed so that workers can see inside, and vehicles are now
checked at the end of each shift to ensure all carrying cages are empty.

Tulane "thoroughly investigated and reported" the incident to the
National Institutes of Health's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, the
university said Thursday. "The Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare
approved the corrective and disciplinary actions undertaken by Tulane
following this incident."

The green monkeys' teeth were knocked out by "improper use of a pole" in
June 2012, according to a letter from Robert R. Twilley, then vice
president for research at Louisiana-Lafayette. He said the New Iberia
Research Center worker who injured the animals was immediately placed on
administrative leave and fired within weeks, and other managers were
told to make sure all workers were using proper techniques for handling
animals.

Monkeys often are moved by threading a hook at the end of a metal pole
through metal rings or slots on their collars.

The baby rhesus monkey died after paralysis and numbness spread from its
left leg to both legs. "The lumbar spinal cord is soft" and possibly
dead, according to a necropsy report dated May 3.

Budkie questioned whether the animal had been treated adequately.

"For the spinal cord to become necrotic, it doesn't happen in five
minutes. It takes a while," Budkie said. "The post mortem doesn't talk
about any of the treatments being given. Usually they go into some
details about the case."

The pathologist ruled out trauma and infection, a university response
said. "We believe that this animal was born with an irreversible
congenital condition. The animal was humanely euthanized and it did not
feel any pain as a result of this condition," said the response emailed
by spokesman Charles R Bier.

The chimpanzees collapsed and died two days apart in December 2012 while
being prepared for tuberculosis tests before they were sent elsewhere —
one of them to a sanctuary, according to a letter from Ramesh Kolluru,
Louisiana-Lafayette's interim vice president for research. He wrote that
routine handling practices were used, and both chimps knew the people
who cared for them and generally cooperated with sedation needed for the
TB test.

The second necropsy was inconclusive; the first indicated that high
blood pressure, possibly related to diabetes, may have led to
"cardiovascular collapse," Kolluru's letter said.

"Usually, animals don't just drop dead for no reason whatsoever," Budkie
said. He said handling stress might have contributed to the deaths.

The university sent a copy of the federal response to the university's
report of those deaths. Brent Morse of the federal Office of Laboratory
Animal Welfare commended the university's prompt reporting and wrote on
March 7, "We ... find no cause for further action by this office."

Louisiana-Lafayette paid an $18,000 fine in 2010 to settle complaints
made the previous year by the Humane Society of the United States. It
paid $38,570 in fines last year for the deaths of three rhesus monkeys
in May 2011 and an injury to a chimpanzee in 2012.